Phew!
For a moment there I had visions of Kryten and the rest of the Nova 5 crew writing the name of a certain fizzy drink brand in the sky!
Top space boffins say that the latest readings from an orbiting science instrument have unlocked the secrets of mighty "Type Ia" supernovae, events in which stars blow up with such violence that they destroy solar systems and outshine entire galaxies. The new data come from NASA's Swift satellite, orbiting the Earth and …
Lewis, why are you so selective about reporting on the categories of science that NASA undertakes? For example, you didn't cover this:
"The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is very likely human-induced and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented in the past 1,300 years."
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
Well, you clearly didn't bother to read the footnotes, since you failed to notice that your original quote was lifted from the IPCC. FWIW, I suspect that there is a scientific case that human CO2 emissions may cause warming, additional to what may or may not be occurring 'naturally'. The trouble is that we're unlikely to find out the true extent (save by waiting a few decades), because real science has been hijacked by zealots on both sides.
Funnily enough, I don't read ElReg looking for peer reviewed science (except by indirect reference). I don't rely on the IPCC, either, and for much the same reasons.
Thats because those Nasa astrophysics boffins have no short term payoffs to gain - whilst Climate scientists have massive short term payoffs to gain. Not all of them are that veneal - but when your grant money rests on short term results then you are bound to be influenced.
It doesnt matter a jot whether the super-nova theory is wrong or right in the general scheme of things until we get out among the stars, which is unlikely with the luddites in charge.
I would also suggest that Physics is real science and the "science of climate change" falls somewhere between history, mathematical modelling, and spin doctoring.
The distinction is simple really: the science boffins observing the supernovae publish their data as well as their hypotheses, calculations, and models. The warmmongers looking for more money in their budgets only publish their conclusions and then do their best Bill Murray imitation* when asked about their data, hypotheses, calculations, and models.
Ghost Busters, "Back off man, I'm a scientist!"
"There's overwhelming evidence to prove that it's a simple statement of fact. "
No, there isn't. There's a great deal of circumstantial evidence but there's also a great deal of question over how accurate and reliable that evidence is, especially given the repeated "adjustments" of historical temperature records that nearly always reduce temperatures in the past, and the reliance on a very small number of proxies that have been shown to have significant error margins and biases in the collection method, amongst other issues. In addition the current warming trend is neither unusual nor particularly significant in historical terms - even within the instrument record - and falls well within the bounds of natural variability.
The entire AGW concept is based on the idea of "forcings" reaching a tipping point. Given that temperatures have been higher in the past (or were until the temperature records were fiddled to show otherwise), and CO2 levels have been much higher without any tipping point being reached, and given that we are still here despite these much warmer and much higher CO2 epochs, I would suyrmise that the current paranoia about a fractional increase in CO2 levels is just so much hokum. That leaves only political reasons for its persistence.
You have to admit, it does offer a great way to raise more revenue.
Uh huh. And the people - and journo-wannabes - who come on boards like this to discredit scientifically solid research into climate change effects are being rigorously informed, educated and objective, and *not political at all.*
And the denial-funders who pay for the FUD around climate change - they're not being political either. They're really angels of lightness and common sense compared to the evil - eeeevil! - IPCC.
Yeah. Right.
How many papers about climate change has Lewis Page and the other 'lalala not happening' deniers on here had published in peer reviewed journals?
Go on. Give me a list.
But hey - all those people doing science every day of their working lives are dead wrong, and all the amateurs on boards like this who can't even do contour integrals without tripping over their forebrains know more about the subject than they do.
Excuse me if I snort with pity and derision in the general direction of your utter fail.
Kind of surprising that the probabilities actually work out such that there are enough white dwarfs at just the right point in their life hitting each other in just the right way to cause the observed numbers of 1a supernovas. But then the universe is a big place... <cue the D.Adams quote!>
"these results could suggest that the dwarf-conkers theory is actually the correct one"
I have never heard a theory of such zarking belgium.
Any hoopy frood knows that Intergalactic Bar Billiards is the reason. Potting a planet into a black hole gets you 4 million points, I just can't remember what a White Dwarf Double Zarquon gets you though.
Pan-galactic gargle-blasters all round, barbeing!
>"I just can't remember what a White Dwarf Double Zarquon gets you though."
Well, it stops the white hole from spewing time into the universe, and gives you the perfect opportunity to say whatever the hell you like to your smeghead crewmate while the time-lines re-knit themselves, but, on the down-side, your computer will become an idiot again.
CAT: So, what is it?
KRYTEN: I've never seen one before -- no one has -- but I'm guessing it's
a white hole.
RIMMER: A _white_ hole?
KRYTEN: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. A black hole
sucks time and matter out of the universe: a white hole returns it.
LISTER: So, that thing's spewing time back into the universe? (He dons
his fur-lined hat.)
KRYTEN: Precisely. That's why we're experiencing these curious time
phenomena on board.
CAT: So, what is it?
KRYTEN: I've never seen one before -- no one has -- but I'm guessing it's
a white hole.
RIMMER: A _white_ hole?
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Slightly more worrying from the science point of view is that this would tend to invalidate the use of Type Ia supernovae as "standard candles", where the explosion is assumed to be of the same size in every case. If the "vampire" theory is correct, a white dwarf skims off material from a companion, until the dwarf's mass exceeds the Chandrasekhar limit, at which point it blows up -- so the supernova star is always the same mass, and hence always the same brightness. In the collision version, you can't guarantee that the mass of the two stars colliding is always the same, so we lose the standard candle.
Why is this important? Well, if you can assume that the explosion is always the same size, it's always the same brightness, and we can use that to work out how far away stuff is. If we can't do that, it makes measuring distances much, much harder, and I suspect a lot of results are going to have to be revisited.
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Hang on. I know the Chandrasekhar limit applies to white dwarfs, but didn't know it automatically meant the things would blow up if it got exceeded. Don't some of them collapse to form neutron stars? And if that is the case, isn't it more likely for one that only just exceeded the limit to collapse, whereas two colliding and exceeding the limit by a huge margin in a tiny amount of time more likely to blow up?
As I recall a neutron star is believed to formed from a type 2 supernova of a star over a certain mass. The collapse is rapid enough for the nuclei to be squashed into neutron degenerate matter before the carbon atoms get a chance to fuse so you don't get the gert kablam you would do from a white dwarf collision or accretion.
It is possible that the 1a type explosion occurs at some tipping point of energy and matter being reached during the merge and so it could be relatively constant; the threashold energy level could generate a consistent "standard candle" brightness with excess steller materials being accelerated outward so quickly as to not significantly participate or contribute to the event, but instead, "seeding" the vista for next generation of stars in that region...
Just a thought...
'Alternatively, two white dwarfs might collide like vast hypermassive billiard balls leading to a cataclysmic blast."
I thought that the theory was that when two white dwarfs collided, they formed an R CorBor star. Then again, my astronomy knowledge was founded long ago and I haven't kept up with the more esoteric theoretical developments.
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I think the white dwarf sucking matter off another star sounded much more *likely*
*two* white dwarfs in a collision sounded *highly* improbable. What are the odds?
Yet the latter appears to correct.
If the comment about the "Standard candle" is correct then it sounds like quite a lot of astronomical stuff is about to change.
Thumbs up for continuing to expand our knowledge of the universe.
Quite a lot of astronomical stuff is always about to change. Of all the stuff in astrophysics, the only things we think we've really got nailed down pretty solid are Gravity and Light (speed and spectra). After that you start piling inferences on top of assumptions on top of hypothesis. Any time you add one new piece of hard data, all those pieces are subject to change. One of the most amazing things about astronomy is that it holds together so well with how little we actually know, because for the most part we can't actually perform experiments to test theories, we can only observe natural occurrences.
"Two main scenarios had been considered possible: in one, the white dwarf sucks in and gobbles up matter from a companion normal star, so gaining mass until, overstuffed, it blows up with unimaginable violence. Alternatively, two white dwarfs might collide like vast hypermassive billiard balls leading to a cataclysmic blast."
In space a white dwarf sucks... Is there a black giant that spews?
Two billiard balls? That kind of collision on a cosmic scale would be cat-orgasmic.... MMMYOWWWWW! Cat scratch feev-ur in deep spaces...